Ghost Hunting for Dummies
by Asper
Summary: On ivory lines, hack ghostbusting and the significance of 3. The trio follow a dead end lead to a seaside town and end up working as exorcists for the performing troupe there.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Samurai Champloo.

**A/N: **Completely not based on geographical or historical fact in the slightest. I barely know where Innoshima is, for god's sake, so please don't kill me for any hideous indiscrepancies.

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It started like this: they had ferried out from the mainland to Innoshima on a lead and were wandering near the outskirts of the said town, having traded all their cash for crossing fare. The day had been brutally warm and hunger, their-ever-present companion, was past nipping at their heels. It was full-on straddling them.

"Oh," Fuu whined, stating the obvious. "I'm so hungry."

To which Mugen replied by producing a tattered and dirty rag from some fold in his garments and wrapping it under his chin. He tied a rather ridiculous bow atop his head and continued trudging along in silence. Jin regarded the action with an impassive look.

Fuu quickened her pace, peering at him queerly: "What are you doing?" She asked him, clearly vexed.

"I'm sick of listening to you bitch about the same damn thing every minute."

Fuu balked at his answer, angrily placing both hands on her hips. "I'm _hungry_, so sue me!"

"But that's just it," Mugen said with exasperation. "You're _always_ hungry. Day, night. It's your constant state of being. Tell me something new."

This was—especially on a day that experienced a heat of this calibre and a lack of food that would wane anyone's tolerance—the absolute last straw for Fuu. She let out an angry shriek before reaching up to tug at the swaddle of cloth around his head, which she figured would function as an adequate noose to strangle him with.

Mugen raised an arm and threw her angry and (furiously) scratching form onto the ground. Unfortunately, despite his quick reflexes, he tumbled forward when she darted out a sneaky leg to trip him. This, to Jin's rare surprise—considering the obvious and comprehensive gap between skill levels—somehow developed into a street melee that several passer-bys scooted around to avoid. He sighed, dumbstruck moment past, and took a step towards them. "You two—"

Which was the moment at which a young man came barrelling through the street they were brawling in, effectively knocking Fuu's tiny and malevolent form off of Mugen's back. Their anger redirected, she placed both hands on her hips, sleeves rolled upwards and sandy dirt marks on her flushed cheeks. Mugen rearranged his bonnet and would have threatened to kill him, if Fuu hadn't pulled some sort of magic act and somehow obtained his sword, scabbard and all.

Fine then, fists it was.

"Where the hell do you think you're going, you little shit?" The child writhed in his grip, his lithe body contorting with the air of an acrobat.

"Stop, I've got to go meet them now," he said furiously, before taking note of the cloth wrapped around Mugen's head.

"That turban—" he started, even though it was the furthest thing from it. Rather than a mystic, Mugen looked more like someone suffering from an extremely painful toothache. But nevertheless, the boy continued: "Are you the exorcists?"

This prompted the following thoughts to fire rapidly through Jin's heat-maddened brain: that, for one, this child would likely lead them to some sort of place that would be infinitely more shaded than the frying pan of a street they were in and, for seconds, they were likely being mistaken for the trio they had found dead out in the road, several miles back, from some bandit-related ambush. They figured this since they found nothing of consequence when Mugen felt compelled to mug their corpses.

Despite his calm logic, it was at the end, when his stomach growled hungrily in its traditional gavel-banging manner, saying: "Shut up and feed me bitch," that he decided to go.

"What are you—" Fuu started loudly, but Jin calmly cut her off with a slick "Yes, we are the ones."

And so, it was then and there, as Fuu and Mugen incredulously watched Jin walk after the small child through the streets, that the trio was about to have their very first encounter with the Kagami Kinsen troupe of travelling performers.

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	2. White Stripes

**Disclaimer: **Samurai Champloo is the property of Shinichiro Watanabe.

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"Why are there so many people?" Fuu hissed.

They had been marched towards a cluster of small tents, nestled snugly in the heart of the township. The city was swarming with villagers going about their daily business and Mugen and Fuu almost lost sight of Jin in the rush.

"Because they live here?" Mugen said, agitatedly sweeping hot sand from the curves and notches of his scabbard. He paused for a moment to give Fuu the evil eye.

"Would you stop brushing at that thing? I dropped it in _sand_, not tar," she exclaimed, unapologetic for dropping and leaving his sword in pursuit of Jin and their little tour guide.

Mugen was all aboard the HMS Slit Her Noisy Little Throat when Fuu turned her head, gesturing at him for silence. Jin had entered the central tent and they both caught the heady and sadly unfamiliar scent of food. Mugen's eyes teared up a little. Fuu, being part Japanese, part bottomless pit, somehow morphed the time-space continuum and ended up at the tent flap in the blink of an eye.

"We're so glad you could come," the troupe leader was telling Jin gratefully. They were almost moved to pity, too, except for the fact that he had been shamelessly picking his ear at the time. With his toe. Needless to say, the performing troupe had been all sorts of charming.

But then again, the three of them had never really embodied any cultural ideal either, so who was Fuu to speak?

The story had gone like this: the village had been the troupe's semi-base, a place they retreated to every once in a while to restock on important things and take some time off. But alas, their current visit had been ruined by a slew of supernatural occurrences and they were convinced that their humble, part-time abode was virulently cursed.

Curses, huh?

In any case, Fuu relished the sudden access to ample food—_free_ food, keep in mind—and kept her mouth shut and ear pinned to the flap of the tent as Jin did the whole mystically listening bit.

"I see," he was telling the troupe leader, a bald man of considerable girth (although this clearly had no effect on his limberness, see above), decked out in an enormous, queer hat embellished with garish blue flowers. Fuu couldn't help raising an eyebrow. This place…

A sharp tug at her collar indicated that Mugen had reached the absolute end of his patience, which had only very waveringly been bought by the promise of food.

Using his usual inside voice, he yelled: "Just what the hell is going on?"

The leader looked up at the sudden noise and Fuu couldn't help grimacing. Busted. Well, so be it then. She reached up to arrange Mugen's head wrap into a more convincing facsimile of a turban before entering the tent with what she hoped was a magical-looking flourish. Mugen followed with an out-of-character complacency, seeking answers but, more importantly, shade.

"My colleagues," Jin said. He was trying very hard not to sigh.

Smiling politely, Fuu turned to the troupe leader and said: "Nice to meet you."

"We are honoured to have you both here," he nodded generously at both new appearances.

Mugen raised a hand in feigned good-nature, until he caught a glimpse of the little boy they had encountered earlier in the busy road.

"You little piece of shit!" Mugen leapt at him viciously, getting a mouthful of dirt when the child dodged his attack. "I'm gonna slit your throat."

"And he looks equally delighted at the re-acquaintance," Jin surmised, watching the child skitter behind the troupe leader in an attempt to avoid the Scary Turban Man. Fuu looked at him, perplexed by his deadpan sarcasm. In an attempt to thwart the kid's escape, Mugen moved to grab him from behind the leader's considerable girth before he darted outside.

"Your associate," the troupe leader asked Jin, now the appointed Sane One. "Is he alright?"

His words were met with Jin's long, grim, resounding and contemplative silence. Any longer and the grand promise of accessible food would be lost forever, prompting Fuu to intercede on his behalf. "Oh, it's just the spiritual energies. He's from an ancient clan of exorcists, old, old blood, really. He was raised in a graveyard, you know. There's really no _normal _after that." Jin raised an eyebrow slightly as she spoke. When she finished, it had reached an impossibly high peak, nearly meshing with his hairline. Well, she didn't see _him_ trying. In the end, she opted to smile awkwardly before darting out of the tent in pursuit of her wayward colleague and his small prey.

The troupe leader turned to smile at his newest employee. "I understand. It's nice to travel with such eclectic comrades, no? It makes life very interesting."

Jin nodded almost imperceptibly. _Interesting_ would not have been his word of choice.

* * *

"Mugen!"

God, not again. If he had been one to believe in it, Mugen would have suspected that he had extremely bad karma from a past life. Or possibly the karma from _this _life had been so horrific, divine retribution had acted prematurely. It could have been that guy he killed last week or those corpses he mugged in the road. Or the dango he stole from that kid. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The one with the crutches.

Actually, screw believing in karma. He probably had every freaking deity on his tail. And irregardless of which religion he managed to earn the ire of, Mugen was convinced their punishment came in the form of the fifteen-year-old girl in front of him. Because, more often than not, Fuu's voice roughly equalled the fiery and (_usually_)unparalleled depths of hell. This, of course, being the one exception.

"Don't blow our cover," she said.

Who the hell was she to tell him what to do?

"Maybe I want to blow our cover," he told her, purely out of spite. Which would have been a bad time for his stomach to growl, but it did, effectively revealing that _no,_ he really _didn't_ want to blow their cover.

She gave him an irritatingly smug look, but only briefly. Fuu was big enough to put aside their differences for food. "Here," she said, almost complacently. "You go on a reconnaissance mission for us."

"Reconn—what?"

"Scope out the city! Get information on this 'curse'. We'll have to do some work or they'll figure us out." Naturally, Fuu's explanation didn't cover exactly why _he_ had to be the one carrying out the grunt work and various other menial tasks. It also omitted the part where she would be stuffing her stupid face in the tent while said work was being done. But standing around all day really wasn't Mugen's thing, even if it was about a thousand degrees in the shade. Plus, he had the whole turban thing going on. No sense in wasting his newfound mystic mojo on these two morons.

So this is what led him through the streets of that sun-baked, seaside town and subsequently to realise that he had seen enough of it in the first few minutes to last a lifetime. The whole damn place was just the same backdrop, rewound over and over again, blurry in the hellish sun. The buildings were low, sturdy, built from rickety driftwood and doused in random splashes of colour. The sand was bleached white-hot and gleamed brilliantly in the daylight. Somewhere near the outskirts of the central square, Mugen could sense the ocean.

All around him, townspeople flooded the streets in busy hordes, seemingly untouched by the blistering heat. Toting fans and parasols and other things in bizarre arrays of colour, they went about their daily business as per usual. Mugen had been taking a brief rest in the shade of a store awning, leaning back against a hot post to watch the throngs of people and seriously contemplating finding the elusive ocean for a swim.

He was awoken from his reverie by a sharp rap on the side of his leg. So the little punk had come back. Mugen scooped him up by the back of his collar and held him up at eye level.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The kid looked at him with a grudging pout. After a moment of silence, Mugen shook him roughly. Sometimes they needed a little persuasion.

"You do want to see them, don't you?" The child said angrily, caving to Mugen's questionable child-rearing skills and pointing towards the central square a little off in the distance.

"Huh?" He made his way over slowly, picking a path through the thick swarm of bodies in the dry market.

Mugen raised a hand to his face, trying to shade himself from the brutal glare of the afternoon sun. Though the areas surrounding it were full of people, the square was an empty, deserted plot in the heart of it all, and Mugen soon understood why.

The central square was crisscrossed with dozens and dozens of lines. They covered surrounding buildings, disappeared into narrow alleys, over and under edifices and were an off-white sort of colour. Mugen had seen statues that colour on old smuggling ships; they were made from the teeth of some sort of giant animal. What was it called?

"The omens," the boy said reverently.

Ivory.


End file.
